The Fantastic Bore! A dull plot, dreadful dialogue - and Billy Elliot as a walking pile of rock. Fantastic Four is the worst Marvel movie yet

Fantastic Four begins quite promisingly, with a schoolboy standing up in front of his classmates and telling them about the science experiment he's conducting in his garage.

He's trying to build a teleporter that will beam human beings from one location to another, like in Star Trek.

As you'd expect, his schoolmates laugh and his teacher tells him to stop fibbing, but one boy's curiosity is piqued. This is Ben Grimm and the science nerd turns out to be Reed Richards, a brainiac to rival Albert Einstein.

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While most superhero movies would get these early parts of the narrative out of the way as quickly as possible so the action can begin, Fantastic Four gets bogged down in them and doesn't give itself enough time to focus on the meat of the story

They become friends and later, when Reed builds his machine and the two of them volunteer as guinea pigs, they're turned into The Thing (Jamie Bell) and Mister Fantastic (Miles Teller).

The trouble is, we have to wait for nearly an hour before this transformation takes place and, in the meantime, we're treated to endless scenes of Reed tinkering about in his laboratory — staring into a computer terminal, brandishing a welding torch and gazing longingly at Susan Storm (Kate Mara), his beautiful colleague.

Sir Tim Hunt's alleged views about how distracting female scientists can be are right on the money, according to this film.

While most superhero movies would get these early parts of the narrative out of the way as quickly as possible so the action can begin, Fantastic Four gets bogged down in them and doesn't give itself enough time to focus on the meat of the story.

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So the dramatic conflict with Doctor Doom (Toby Kebbell), when it finally arrives, feels perfunctory. It's all build-up and no pay-off, like a 100-minute trailer for a film that never materialises.

Another problem is that director Josh Trank (Chronicle) doesn't have any grasp of what makes this kind of film enjoyable. One moment the four protagonists are languishing in hospital beds, having just crawled out of Reed's teleporter, the next they're rushing about, enjoying their superpowers.

Where are the sequences in which they learn how to use their gifts? For some reason, Trank left those moments on the cutting-room floor and, instead, decided to include yet another scene in which Dr Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) lectures 'the kids' on the importance of working together as a team, rather than fighting among themselves.

To add to the string of disappointments, Jamie Bell, who played the ballet enthusiast in Billy Elliot, is wasted as Ben Grimm. He trots along beside Reed for the first 50 minutes like some faithful golden retriever, but has almost no lines and fails to register as a character.

Somehow, he manages to remain bland and uninteresting even when he turns into a walking pile of rubble.

This isn't Bell's fault — he isn't given anything to work with by the writers or director. Like so much else in this film, he's simply thrown away.

Marvel Studios, which is responsible for The Avengers series and all the associated origin stories, had nothing to do with Fantastic Four, and that is a great shame. The witty dialogue and knowing humour of films like Iron Man and Guardians Of The Galaxy is completely absent here.

Marvel Studios, which is responsible for The Avengers series and all the associated origin stories, had nothing to do with Fantastic Four, and that is a great shame

Even Thor, the most earnest and literal-minded of the Avengers, seems like a member of the Algonquin Round Table next to Reed and his sidekicks. It's like a superhero movie made by the writers of Thomas The Tank Engine.

To give you an example of just how leaden the dialogue is, take the moment when a doctor examines Susan Storm after her transformation.

There's something a little odd about her, to put it mildly, because she keeps disappearing and reappearing — literally becoming invisible.

The doctor turns to her father, who is understandably a bit worried, and says matter-of-factly: 'She's moving in and out of the visual spectrum.'

Oh right. That. Nothing to worry about then. It's as if Susan is suffering from a minor bout of hay fever, rather than a medical condition that breaks all the known laws of physics. Where's Doctor House when you need him?

Turning Marvel's celebrated comic book series into an entertaining, action-packed summer blockbuster should be a piece of cake, but this is the fourth attempt and could be the worst of the lot.

That's saying something, considering the first, by legendary schlockmeister Roger Corman, was so bad that it was never released.

If I owned the rights to these characters, I'd call it a day, but depressingly, there's already a follow-up in the works.

Flower power's dark side

Rating:

Growing up in San Francisco in the aftermath of the flower-power era was no bed of roses, if this film is to be believed.

The trauma endured by 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) is a terrible indictment of the laid-back, liberal parenting that was all the rage in the Seventies.

Her mother (Kirstin Wiig) is so off her head on drugs and alcohol she doesn't notice that Minnie has been seduced by her 35-year-old boyfriend (Alexander Skarsgard), or that she's playing hooky from school and engaging in the sort of sexual antics that would make a Premier League footballer blush.

The trauma endured by 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) is a terrible indictment of the laid-back, liberal parenting that was all the rage in the Seventies

The odd thing is, we're asked to believe Minnie suffers no lasting damage from these experiences, which are presented as a series of comic vignettes.

She emerges at the end as a strong, independent woman, determined to make her way as a free-spirited artist.

There is no doubting the talent of first-time director Marielle Heller. The Diary Of A Teenage Girl is an assured debut with a fresh female perspective on a familiar coming-of-age story.

But for every teenage girl who rose, phoenix-like, out of this moral quagmire, there were dozens who never recovered.

Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts

The gift is a satisfyingly creepy debut from first-time director Joel Edgerton, who also casts himself as the film's supposed villain.

When Simon (Jason Bateman) and his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) move into a lavish house in the Hollywood Hills, they're not expecting trouble with the neighbours.

But Simon is recognised by Gordon (Edgerton), a high school classmate, who insists on presenting the couple with a series of housewarming gifts until they feel obliged to invite him to dinner.

When Simon (Jason Bateman) and his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) move into a lavish house in the Hollywood Hills, they're not expecting trouble with the neighbours

It's no surprise to learn that this apparently friendless, middle-aged man was known as 'Gordo the weirdo' back in school. However, just as you're settling in for a routine psychological thriller — taps are turned on in the middle of the night, the family dog disappears — The Gift pulls the rug out from under you.

I won't reveal how, exactly, but suffice to say that Simon isn't everything he seems. The Gift isn't faultless. It's not a grown-up psychological thriller, so much as a fairly routine one with a more sophisticated film struggling to get out.

At times, it feels more like two movies stuck together than a satisfying whole. But for the most part it works and the script, also by Edgerton, keeps you on your toes throughout.

Marshland is set in Spain just after the fall of Franco and follows the efforts of two mismatched detectives to solve a double murder in Andalusia.

Veteran director Alberto Rodriguez is good at conjuring up a morally compromised atmosphere and achieves his aim of creating an absorbing thriller and an allegorical tale about the impact of fascist corruption on Spanish society.

In the end, though, Rodriguez introduces too many elements — there's a psychic fisherwoman who is completely extraneous to the plot — and the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

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Fantastic Four is the worst Marvel movie yet and Billy Elliot as a walking pile of rock